How To Get Real Business Opportunities from Twitter, I’m Serious!

I spend a lot of time on Twitter cultivating relationships and trying to find new opportunities to grow my network. Over the last few months I have gotten into a pretty smooth groove and have developed a real focused system that not only gains me a boatload of new followers everyday but exposes me to guest opportunities, business ventures, partnerships and of course new clients.

1. Get your research on! – FollowerWonk from the f olks at SEOMOZ has become my new best friend as of late and has really transformed the way I move within my Twittersphere. The Wonk is free and you really only need to focus on a small section to get some real effective results. Here’s how

Go to http://www.followerwonk.com and sign in with your Twitter acct.

Select “Search Twitter Bio’s”

Now in the text box type in the word or phrase that represents your target person or companies. If you are a B2B agency then you might search for folks with the term “Marketing Director” in their bio or the name of a big company like “Tupperware” or “Reebok” etc. Do not hit “Do It” yet.

Next underneath text box select “More Options” and get even more focused results by typing in location. This helps you get very small focused lists that will be of real value to you, ok now hit “Do It”

A list of Twitter bios that match your search criteria will now pop up, here is a pic of a search I did for “Marketing Directors” in “Orlando”

From this list I now have real targets in my area that are not only possible clients but even better, possible relationships I can grow. Yes I want you to think relationship first!

On this list there are a few important things to look for

Number of Tweets – you want people who are active daily or at least weekly, not so you can learn anything but so you know they will see your tweets…This will make more sense later.

How many people they are following – this will tell you if they are selfish social people or friendly, if they follow easy that’s good for you. If they are following a very small number of people then it will be a tougher road to get them hooked on you.

How many Followers they have – So to begin with you want to look for folks who have less than 5,000 followers. If they have 100,000 followers chances are your attempts at Direct Message and Tweets will get buried and or ignored or even seen by another person on their staff that wont care enough to pass your info along

Days Old – Here isn’t a big deal but at least it gives you the idea of how long they’ve been around, this has no real bearing on my plan but it’s a nice insight into how they have been cultivating their presence.

Social Authority – SA is an internal rating system over at Wonk you can learn about it here http://followerwonk.com/social-authority. Use this to gain some insight to your targets overall footprint on twitter. Now I use it at a glance and it helps my decision making.

Bios – You will also see their Bio there and business titles usually are very prevalent as I have highlighted. Now you know their names, where they work their location and I have gotten a great snapshot of their social habits by the Wonk and its number.

Now you have your targets time to start following them.

On the Left side of your Wonk list you can follow your prospects quickly clicking “Follow”.

2. Say Hello – Now that you are following your potentials I want you to go to each one of their Twitter profiles from FollowerWonk by clicking on their name. Once in their profile I want you to DM “Direct Message” them with a very simple “Hi just wanted to say happy to be following you, let’s connect sometime” This is much more of a soft message and not some dumb auto generated stuff that always asks the person for an action. It’s very important at this stage to not ask for anything but simply a future connection moment. This type of DM almost always gets a response. Monitor your profile daily for DM responses as once they respond back, it’s on!

3. See what they like – Play the investigator, have some fun do a sweep of their latest tweets and interactions and you will get a good idea of their likes and opinions and will help you format your tweets better as to kill more birds with less stones.

4. Learn to be a Tailor – The biggest mistake you can make on Twitter is using your profile to tweet things that have no purpose. Sure it’s ok to Tweet that you’re at the movies or dinner, I call those filler tweets and they must have a purpose as well but their purpose is to give the illusion that you aren’t all business and helps to humanize you to your followers but make these fillers short sweet and only a few a week. Start tailoring your Tweets at your targets by mentioning them and things you know they will grab at.

5. Set up auto feed – This isn’t part of the daily process but is vital to its overall success so this must be setup but don’t fret it only has to happen once. It is very important that your profile look as active as possible and with a busy schedule it’s hard to keep the info flowing. Go to http://www.Twitterfeed.com and set up an auto feed that posts every 6 to 8 hours with industry specific content that puts you in the light of an authority. Remember people like connecting with others they deem to be successful or an authority, sorry folk’s perception just is reality.

6. Make a Mention – You should mention your targets once every week in a tweet. Retweets and favorites are equally important but mentions usually get reciprocated. They will almost always thank you for it and be more apt to talking with you.

7. Grab some Lunch – The goal of this whole thing is to get these folks to follow you and trust me by this stage at least half of your targets are now among your followers. Once that happens DM them and say “Hey so & so we are in same city, crazy to not grab some lunch, have some things I would love to get your opinion on. Let me know your schedule…thanks” I promise you will have 2 or 3 lunches a month with your targets doing this.

8. Following Grows – The cool thing about this process is once you start doing this after the first week or so your followers will start to grow by leaps and bounds every day. I average at least 10 new followers a day using this system.

Well folks that’s it, I spend at least an hour a day using this process and it’s certainly far from perfect but it works for me and I know it can help you get more opportunities from the Bird!